Saturday, July 25, 2015

Lenovo A6000+ review

Given that I now own an iPhone 6 plus, the next search was to find something useful as a second standby phone. After spending 30s and 40s of thousands on phones, there was an era where phones suddenly started costing 20s of thousands.

With the advent of Xiaomi, people like Lenovo and Samsung faced such a wrath on pricing that they even went to the extent of reduced profits, or even sometimes sacking employees to make good the loss on business somehow. The mobile phone market only got hotter with the introduction of newer - cheaper and equally powered - qualcomm snapdragon series of chipsets at a very sweet pricing of lower than 10000 bucks. So suddenly the need to spend anything more than this price for a good android phone effectively vanished.

As I was busy checking out what I would get at about this price, which suited what I needed, I rummaged through lots of phones on flipkart and Amazon. Primarily my needs for a standby phone were these things in no particular order

Very Good battery life

4G sim trays if possible keeping it bit future proof

decent screen if not the most sharpest

lightweight phone and display of about 4.5+ inches in size

Average camera - this wasnt the purpose for me to buy

Though service was important I could forego that at the cost of the phone itself

Reasonable audio, as my purpose was not this as well

One fine day I chanced upon the Lenovo A6000+ at my friends cube at office. After playing around with it, the next moment I ordered it on a special deal price of about 1000 bucks off on flipkart app. This means, instead of the regular 7200 bucks, I got the phone at 6200 bucks.

When I received the phone, I could not but feel very good about everything that the phone had to offer for that price. I am not a big fan of Lenovo. This was because of my previous bad experience on buying a Lenovo K-900 which I detailed out on this blog. You can read more about that here.

First off when I opened the package, it was simple to open, package contents were easy to notice and understand without even a manual, and I could easily fit the micro sim cards along with memory card and battery without a fuss. Charging it was child’s play as well and nothing special from what used to be before.

Here are some of the positive things about this phone I would like to highlight about the Lenovo A6000+

Very lightweight even with the battery

4G sim card support for both sims - very futureproof

Screen is quite sharp for the price

The VIBE User interface is an amazing joy to use on android - I love the way the icons look and feel and its very modern for my kind of liking

Its just the right size for every hand and effortless to carry around

Screen protector was included which means no going to the shop just for this

I did not want a back cover for this phone as it was a standby phone for me. I guess you may not need it as well

Fast boot mode in lenovo simply rocks

Clear audio due to dolby compliance

Amazing battery life - almost 3-4 days if you keep data switched off, easily a full day on continous data usage - particularly google maps which consumes lots of battery

Easily removable back panel making it easy to access sim cards and memory card - though its not hot swappable which is not a big minus point

Every phone built to some price will have its negatives, and the Lenovo A6000+ is not an exception. So here they are:

Audio is not loud enough - this was the same grouse in my earlier K-900 and so also here.

Call volume cannot be increased beyond a point and in noisy environments this phone is just not suitable to use at all

Some people may find the phone too plasticky on all corners and at the back

No backlighting for the three android soft keys at the bottom of the phone - this is a major slip for me since you have to press they keys with more of intuition than anything of accuracy

The volume sliders and power button are easily accessible but they just dont have that feel to them as you find on other more expensive phones

Average camera - remember you are not paying for great optics here so this is the best what you can expect !!

(iphone 6 plus taken by Lenovo A6000+)

The one single selling point for me as far as this phone is concerned is the FAST BOOT mode that lenovo has put into the software. Rather it is emulating PC bootups by saving last memory status to flash storage and booting off from there the next time.

Whichever way the implementation has been done, I would say the lenovo boots up in just 2 seconds on fast boot. Yes you read it right - 2 seconds !! This is the single most important thing I have noticed as an improvement across all android phones in recent years. Simply mind blowing.

The camera is average - its not the greatest but you could live with images taken off this phone as readability is still clear. I am not expecting low light shots to be great on this phone either. If you are looking for a great camera - look elsewhere like Apple, not lenovo.

So does this phone justify the 6000 rupee price tag? - Heck, absolutely yes. Lenovo has provided brilliant value for money - or rather they have been forced to rethink on pricing by newer players such as Xiaomi who are determined to give them a run for their money. But Lenovo has clearly jumped back into the game and for good. The upcoming Lenovo k3 note is surely going to be yet another example of how good a phone can get for as low as about 11000 bucks. Yes, we already had the Xiaomi Redmi note for much lesser - by almost 40%, but then at 3GB ram the lenovo k3 note will kick some serious ass. The brilliant looking user interface only means better usability and the rather large battery and screen would only produce more fireworks.

For the budget conscious consumer the A6000+ is a very good buy offering some great usability experience, good battery backup, reasonable camera, future ready 4G sim slots and expandable memory and all this in an extremely lightweight shell. Look no further - swipe that credit card now!

Srikanth is a blogger, reader, photographer, butter dosa eater, an urban car racer and an apple fanboy. He loves music, playing table tennis and traveling. Most times he would like to be solitary to introspect on what life has thrown to him and the bigger purpose of life.

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Srikanth Eswaran

Bengloor Huduga

Srikanth is a blogger, reader, photographer, butter dosa eater, an urban car racer & an apple fanboy. He loves music, playing table tennis and traveling. Most times he would like to be solitary to introspect on what life has thrown to him and the bigger purpose of life.